


the proverbial fox in the milk

by darwinsdonut



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Blue Team, Cronut - Freeform, Discourse, Gen, Hint: It's a Metaphor, Midwestern Donut, RvB16, Season 16 Spoilers, farm life, red team - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-07-30 00:06:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16275146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darwinsdonut/pseuds/darwinsdonut
Summary: There was a fox in the milk jug. But no matter how much bad entered something good, Donut's heart never changed- keeping his friends safe was always priority.





	the proverbial fox in the milk

There was a fox in the milk jug.

That was how Franklin’s mom always put it. Something that didn’t belong, some low-grade travesty made into a whole big ol’ thing.  _ Don’t cry over spilled milk.  _ That was supposed to mean once something was out, once something was soiled, it was done and over with- nothing to cry about, just something to clean up.

Ostracized, alone, the choice made easy, Franklin had gone off on his own  _ again.  _ Taken a blow for his friends, from someone he’d once thought highly of, someone who had no excuse except the problems they let their head develop. He wasn’t belittling DID- Doc had a real problem there- but… There came a time when someone’s personal circumstances could no longer be allowed to hurt someone else.

There was a fox in the milk jug.

When Franklin was a wee tyke, he’d gone out to the barn early one morning, determined to get milk and make muffins for his mama for breakfast. He was just that kind of kid- always determined to do right, rarely actually managed it. Good intentions, a soft heart, compassionate and caring. Made fun of to all hell. Laughed along because it made people happy.

This particular morning, under mid-autumn crisp as a sky cotton-candy blue lightened with the sun, Franklin crept out through dew-laden grass that soaked through his shoes and entered the big wood-and-tin barn where their nursing cow was kept with her calf. She let him milk her; she was gentle, and, while one of the biggest cows, had always been the most affectionate, never a cause for fear. Some people were uncomfortable in the presence of such a huge bovine- but never Franklin. He  _ knew  _ her.

He milked her, and then left the bucket and the barn to go feed the chickens. Maybe five years old, he required a bit more time than the average farm-hand, since the feed-bag was heavy and the chickens remembered they’d descended from raptors. He did his best, and came back to the barn- to find a fox.

A red fox, scrawny and young, not the usual harvest-fattened creature. Lapping up the fresh milk. Donut first ran forward, shouting,  _ No! No! No!  _ Because all he could think about was that he couldn’t use that milk for muffins now. He couldn’t make breakfast for his mama. And, for a five-year-old, that was an ordained tragedy.

The fox ran, of course, because the child’s panic stirred the cow and she stamped her feet and Franklin hollered something awful. The milk jug fell on the floor. Shattered glass everywhere. The calf huddled in a corner, and the situation only quelled when Franklin’s own mother came running to investigate the raucous. She found Franklin with a broken toe, stomped on by the panicked cow; the calf with dialated pupils and heavy breathing; and the mother cow with glass around her hooves and desperate eyes. Franklin’s mother went for him first, and then the cow, and then the calf. 

They made muffins that morning anyway. His mother told him that sometimes foxes just got in the milk jug, and it was a fact of life, and they didn’t have to like it but that didn’t make it untrue. Sneaky creatures, crept up and stole at something good, infiltrated a sturdy structure and broke things. They couldn’t repair the milk jug, and they couldn’t get back the spilled milk- but these weren’t things to cry about.

They were things to  _ fix. _

A few summers went by; Franklin grew and his mother taught him more things, more metaphors, more farm-life proverbs. Their midwestern ranch was a church in itself and he was there for every sermon. He did his best.

Then came the morning he walked back into the barn, after feeding the chickens, and had forgotten the

milk jug again. He’d made a habit to secure it rather than leaving it- his own fault, really, that it was sitting on the floor, then, with a red fox, bushy and fattened, stealing the milk.

His own fault, really. He’d allowed it. He knew it was nearby, because it always was around this time of year. So he sat down, waited it out, and then the fox left.

He put up precautions. He didn’t want to trap the fox, and there was no need to kill it completely or release it in the woods way out in the middle of nowhere. He just made it harder for the fox to get in- and eventually, it gave up.

There was a fox in the milk jug.

Franklin’s adult life had been havoc through havoc. Chaos and chaos and chaos. He got through most situations with a chipper attitude, his farm-life proverbs, and his feigned innocence and double-entendre speech style that would make his mother  _ weep.  _ His time in the UNSC had changed him. He was no longer the five-year-old who snuck out early in the morning and broke his toe on a quest to make muffins. He was the lightish-red almost-hero of Red Team, entirely unsung and unglorified, completely unpopular. He loved his friends. He knew they didn’t care for him. He didn’t care. 

There was a fox in the milk jug.

Donut had been most himself while with Cronut, and even then it had been  _ off-  _ because Cronut was Donut’s fake-personality, and not the soft-hearted, compassionate kid who said things a particular way just to make people laugh or face-palm or what-have-you. There was nothing soft about Cronut. And Cronut was gone now, anyhow.

There was a fox in the milk jug.

No one noticed when Donut disappeared, and they only appreciated his reappearance because it saved their lives. Franklin Delano Donut- saving his friends, friends who wouldn’t call him the same, and still entirely unappreciated.

There was a fox in the milk jug.

Donut, doing his damn  _ best,  _ entirely unappreciated. Still mocked. Still held with that same level of assumed incompetence. Donut, the unsung hero of Red Team, the one who’d been getting shit done since  _ forever,  _ and only tolerated because he wasn’t Grif. But even Grif had Simmons, Grif had Tucker, Grif had his sister- Donut had no one.

There was a fox in the milk jug.

Donut refused to be the fox. 

He stepped through the portal, he continued to feign, to pretend to be something he wasn’t. He fought for his friends. He fought someone he’d known, someone he’d loved, and only because it was what had to be done. 

He wasn’t the five-year-old getting milk from the cow. He was a sim-trooper with a giant hammer facing off against enemies of unspeakable strength. He had muscles from farm life and military life, sure, but that wasn’t his strength.

He wasn’t the five-year-old anymore, he refused to be the fox- but he was still that same old heart.

By the time he was done, the milk jug was safe. The fox was gone. The cow and the calf were okay. 

Donut was worse for wear- but he didn’t care.

No more fox in the milk jug.

**Author's Note:**

> does it make sense? probably not  
> anyway this is... in response to current fandom discourse but it doesn't have to be that, it can also just be a fic. 
> 
> the point: something bad can intrude on something good and soil it, but that doesn't mean it can't be fixed and that everything is ruined forever. it just means it's something to fix.


End file.
